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SUNNYVALE — Fifty-seven grade-schoolers bounded through the campus gates Thursday morning in adorable pastel-colored face masks and lined up to scrub their hands, ushering in a new era of education in the Bay Area as the first school to officially return to the classroom in the age of the coronavirus.

Sunnyvale Christian School, a TK-5 private school in the heart of Silicon Valley, became the region’s first to welcome back students with a new set of rituals and safety protocols — along with a renewed sense of normalcy painfully absent since the mass quarantines closed classrooms in March.

The best part? “Just seeing everyone in real life instead of on the silly computer,” gushed Jacob Bolhorst, a first grader who arrived with his transitional-kindergartener brother Logan. His mother, Tanya Ortiz-Bolhorst, called it “a blessing.”

State officials in July required all schools in counties on the state’s monitoring list for growing coronavirus outbreaks — including all but Napa in the Bay Area — to start the new school year with online-only “distance learning.” Sunnyvale Christian started the school year online but received one of the first waivers in the Bay Area to return to the classroom.

SUNNYVALE – AUGUST 27: Teacher assistant Stephanie Hernandez helps students stretch out outside during the first day of school at Sunnyvale Christian School in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (Randy Vazquez/ Bay Area News Group) 

The state allowed elementary schools — whose younger students are less likely to suffer severe illness from the virus and more likely to have difficulty learning online — to seek waivers to reopen through county health officials, in consultation with parents, teachers and the California Department of Public Health.

More than 100 schools or districts statewide have received waivers so far — more than 80 in Orange and San Diego counties, both of which came off the monitoring list Sunday.

Santa Clara County late Wednesday revealed it has received waiver requests from 62 schools and districts, 55 of them private and seven of them public, including three charter schools. Sunnyvale Christian and Moreland School District in San Jose, which plans to start in-class instruction Sept. 2, are the only two approved so far in the Bay Area.

Contra Costa County is evaluating 22 waiver requests, San Mateo County about 15. Other counties, such as Alameda, have said they aren’t considering waivers for now until they get better control of the virus.

Schools have been at the center of a pitched debate over reopening, pitting many parents who say online learning is robbing their kids of a good education and their own ability to work against other parents and many teachers who fear the virus risk is just too great to go back to class now.

Margo Dickson, Sunnyvale Christian’s preschool director and vice principal, said that while her staff hasn’t voiced concerns about returning to the classroom, some parents have expressed “hesitancy,” and the school is “talking through things with them and praying with them to try to settle their hearts down.”

SUNNYVALE – AUGUST 27: Teacher assistant Edson Hernandez sanitizes the playground during the first day of school at Sunnyvale Christian School in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (Randy Vazquez/ Bay Area News Group) 

Many parents had already made the decision to withdraw their children from Sunnyvale Christian, even before the start of the year — enrollment has been a concern for many private schools now forced to teach online. The school’s current enrollment is about half what it was last year. Dickson said some families feared exposing grandparents at home to the virus, and others had quit their jobs to home-school their children.

But Edme Hernandez, who is both a parent and a teacher at Sunnyvale Christian, said the summer program, which her daughter attended, made her more comfortable about safety.

“I saw it as a parent, so it gave me confidence to come back as a teacher,” Hernandez said. “There’s a thankfulness in the air.”

The classrooms doors were open Thursday to a courtyard with a playground for ventilation. Colored dots on the ground marked where students could stand properly distanced in line, red tape covered the water fountains, and classroom desks were spaced apart.

Dickson said it’s too soon to know how quickly the school will have to replenish its hygiene supplies, but she said it spent $2,000 on new contact-less soap and paper towel dispensers.

SUNNYVALE – AUGUST 27: A student reads a book during the first day of school at Sunnyvale Christian School in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (Randy Vazquez/ Bay Area News Group) 

The county is watching what happens now at Sunnyvale Christian, and other schools that have applied for waivers are hoping to hear back soon.

“We know that in-person interaction is especially important for the younger students,” said Brian Yager, head of school for the private Harker School in San Jose, which is awaiting a response to its waiver request.

Shelly Viramontez, superintendent at Campbell Union School District, agreed. Her district began the year online Monday and is also awaiting word on its waiver request.

Feedback from students in the spring showed they missed the ability to get quick answers from teachers or classmates when they didn’t understand something the teacher was saying, Viramontez said. And teachers miss that direct connection to their students as well, she said.

SUNNYVALE – AUGUST 27: Chastine Wong, 5, left, gets picked up by her mother Channon, right, during the first day of school at Sunnyvale Christian School in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (Randy Vazquez/ Bay Area News Group) 

“When a teacher is in a classroom, they’re taking in data the whole time,” Viramontez said. “They can see the confused look. You don’t have that ability in the online setting in the same way.”

Sunnyvale Christian’s experience with on-campus summer programs for their preschool and elementary students made it easier to apply for a waiver to reopen, Dickson said. During the application process, they went back and forth several times with a liaison from the county.

Persistence paid off, Dickson said, and the reward was clear when the students came bouncing back onto campus.

“Even though there’s all these procedures,” she said, “there’s great joy on the children’s faces.”